Archive for the ‘Mudding’ Category

Today the kids and I ran Mud Factor 2014 in Sammamish. It was the kids’ first-ever mud run — and hopefully the first of many.

The run itself was a big disappointment and a far cry from what I’d seen on YouTube. There were only about 4-5 obstacles on the course. Worse, it was heavy on “run” — for some reason the 1/2 mile kids run was about 2 1/2 miles — and very light on the “mud.”

As in, except for one 20-f00t mud crawl at the end, there wasn’t any.

The course was so bad, in fact, that I didn’t even bother with the adult course, which we’d basically already done having been misdirected by course “organizers” to go one way when we should have gone another.

What made the morning memorable, however, was Reese. Specifically, her overcoming of a fear.

On our first run through the course, Reese tried, froze and then refused to scale on of the ten-foot wall obstacles set up on the course:

This miffed me a fair bit because I don’t want her life to be governed by her fears — and there was nothing reasonable to fear about a ten-foot wall that other five year olds were scaling with ease.

Despite my pleading

we moved on and finished the race.

I couldn’t get over the disappointment of skipping an obstacle, however, and so back to the wall we headed.

That’s when it got good.

With no one around, Reese suddenly found the courage to scale the wall:

Three more times up and over and she jumped her way down:

This enabled us to take a real finishers’ pic:

More importantly, it enabled Reese to spend the ride home knowing she’d overcome a fear.

This morning I returned from a three-day trip to the Windy City. The purpose: a mini-reunion of my friends from Georgetown Law, class of 1994. A few pics, the rest of which are on Facebook and Shutterfly:

Today the family Jenkins met up with the fam Bracken out in Kent. The occasion — Quinn and my running of the Gladiator Run. 3,000 or so participants in all, good fun had by all.

A few pics:

It's a safe bet that I was the only Georgetown Law alum who ran behind a big-wheeled truck this weekend.

Getting mentally prepared.

Jumping over fire -- literally.

Post-race family portrait with Quinn in the background.

UPDATE: Turns out I did quite well. I finished third among 205 males age 40-44; 58th place among males in the race; and 63rd place out of 3,071 participants overall. Won’t be in the Olympics anytime soon, but not bad, either.

This morning I braved it out to Carnation to participate in my first-ever Hell Run.

Quinn and I at the finish line. I'm pretty sure this was the most fun I've had all year.

If that wasn’t the most fun I’ve had all year, it was mighty close.

The event took place out in the middle of nowhere in Carnation. I was there with my friends Quinn and Carla Bracken. Quinn ran it, Carla didn’t — although she surely will next year. Quinn and I were off in the second wave of the day. The route was considerably tougher than I thought it would be. I think there were five or six mud pits, 2-3 fifteen-foot walls we scaled, a river we had to traverse, and a host of other obstacles over the 3.5 mile course. (More.) I finished in 32:37, good for 98th place out of 1,467 males who started, so well within the top ten percentile — not bad for a forty-two year old weekend warrior. Given that I had to stop three times to keep my mud-laden shoes from falling off, it was a time with which I was quite pleased.

Quinn posted pics on Facebook so there’s no need for me to repost them here. Suffice it to say, however, that we’ll be adding to them in the years ahead.